ZenMarket vs Buyee (2026): Which Is Actually Cheaper for Your Cart?

Search this question and you'll find a dozen comparisons, most of them confident and most of them working from numbers that are no longer true. The commonest version says ZenMarket charges a flat ¥300 an item and Buyee takes 6% of your cart, so cheap items go to Buyee and expensive ones go to ZenMarket.

Every part of that is wrong now. Buyee doesn't charge a percentage. ZenMarket doesn't charge a flat ¥300. Both changed during 2026, and the rule that falls out of the current numbers isn't about price at all.

We had it wrong too, and corrected it in public — the details are in our full comparison of five proxy services. This page is the head-to-head, run against both companies' own published pricing in August 2026.

What They Actually Charge

ZenMarket bills per item, at a rate set by where the item came from.

Plus a funds deposit fee starting at 1%, which their fee summary lists under "always pay." Buying several units of the same item counts as one fee; different sizes or colours are charged separately.

Buyee bills per order, and the item count doesn't matter.

Flat rate ¥500 per order. Even if the number of successful bids or purchases is more than two, it is a flat rate of ¥500. Even if multiple purchases are from the same store, it is a flat rate of ¥500.

Then a guarantee plan on every order: Standard ¥500 (which Buyee marks as recommended), Insured Delivery ¥500, Inspection ¥300, or Lite at ¥0.

Four Carts, Run Twice

Here is the same set of carts costed under both services. Domestic shipping is set at ¥650 per seller, mid-range of the ¥150–1,500 Buyee publishes, and applied equally to both. International shipping is excluded because it depends on your box, not your proxy.

The first table assumes you switch Buyee to the free Lite plan.

Now the same four carts with Buyee's recommended ¥500 plan left in place.

Buyee wins three of four in the first table and one of four in the second. Nothing changed except a dropdown.

That is the single most useful thing on this page. Every other comparison you'll read argues about fee structures; the decision for most ordinary carts is made by a setting people click past in four seconds.

To be precise about what we can and can't confirm: Buyee publishes these four plans and marks Standard as recommended. We could not verify from their pages whether Standard is pre-selected in the checkout flow. If it is, the second table is what most people are actually paying. Look at the plan before you confirm an order, and if you don't want the inspection or the delivery cover, Lite is there and it costs nothing.

The one cart ZenMarket wins outright

Look at row three. A single item from one of ZenMarket's Recommended Stores at ¥300 is the cheapest per-item rate either service offers, and Buyee's ¥500 minimum can't match it.

But that advantage has a ceiling, and it's the 1% deposit fee that sets it. ¥300 plus 1% overtakes ¥500 at exactly ¥20,000 of goods. Below that, ZenMarket is genuinely cheaper on a single Recommended Store item. Above it, the percentage has eaten the difference — which is why row four flips back.

Where the Answer Comes From

Strip out the arithmetic and three questions decide this.

1. Are you buying from auctions or Mercari? This is the biggest single factor and it isn't close. ZenMarket puts both platforms in its ¥800 tier — its most expensive — while Buyee charges ¥500 for the order. Three auction wins cost ¥2,400 at ZenMarket and ¥500 at Buyee. If your shopping is auctions and Mercari, the rest of this page is detail.

2. How many items are going into one order? ZenMarket's fee multiplies; Buyee's doesn't. The crossover is the second item. One thing from a shop and they're comparable; four things and Buyee is charging a quarter as much.

3. Are you leaving items in storage? ZenMarket gives 60 days free, Buyee 30. Both then charge daily up to a 90-day ceiling. This never appears in fee comparisons because it isn't a fee, but if you're accumulating a haul or waiting on a pre-order, it is the difference between one box and two — and a second international shipment costs far more than any service fee on this page.

The Things That Aren't the Fee

Four differences that don't show up in a price table and matter more than some that do.

Buyee is Mercari's official proxy partner. Mercari listings carry a "Buy with Buyee" button. In practice that means faster processing and fewer orders failing because a seller cancelled while the proxy was still working through a queue. On Mercari specifically, that operational advantage compounds the ¥300-per-item fee gap.

Consolidation is free at both. Buyee's own materials say so plainly — "no charge for consolidation service" — and ZenMarket includes initial consolidation in its fee. This used to be a real differentiator between proxies and no longer separates these two.

ZenMarket includes things Buyee sells separately. Shipping insurance for parcels under ¥5,000,000, and domestic bank fees, are inside ZenMarket's service fee. At Buyee, comparable cover is what the ¥500 guarantee plans are for. Whether that makes ZenMarket cheaper depends entirely on whether you wanted the cover — which is the same question as the checkbox above, approached from the other side.

Neither lets you cancel an auction. ZenMarket states it flatly: you cannot cancel a bid or a purchased item for any reason, and for Mercari and Rakuma the same applies once paid. This is not a proxy being difficult — it's how the underlying marketplaces work. Bid like the money is already gone.

Paying, and What Happens If It Goes Wrong

Two structural differences that only show up once you're actually using the service.

ZenMarket runs on a prepaid balance. You fund your account first, then buy from it — you don't pay per purchase the way you would at a normal shop. That is what the 1% deposit fee is: their own summary describes it as covering the payment gateway costs on PayPal, Alipay and cards. It also means the fee is charged on money you put in, not on money you spend, so topping up more than you need doesn't save you anything.

The practical effect is a small friction on impulse buying and a real advantage on auction sniping — the funds are already sitting there when the auction closes at three in the morning, and nothing depends on a card clearing in time. Buyee bills you per order instead, taking cards, PayPal and Apple Pay.

Neither service can protect you from a bad secondhand item, and ZenMarket says so. Their compensation policy is explicit: if a seller sends the wrong or a damaged item, full or partial compensation happens only if the seller agrees to it — and for used items from JDirectItems Auction, Mercari or Rakuma, compensation is not possible in most cases.

Read that carefully, because it covers exactly the purchases most collectors are making. A proxy is an agent, not a warranty. When you buy a used figure from an individual seller through a proxy, the proxy has bought it on your instruction and their liability effectively ends there.

This is where Buyee's guarantee plans stop looking like an upsell and start looking like a product. The ¥300 Inspection plan has someone look at the item before it ships internationally; the ¥500 Insured Delivery plan covers the shipping leg. Neither makes a bad seller good, but on an expensive used purchase they buy you a checkpoint that ZenMarket doesn't offer at any price.

So the honest version of the checkbox advice above: switch to Lite on cheap, low-risk orders — and think properly before doing it on a ¥50,000 grail from an unknown auction seller. The ¥500 you save is the ¥500 that would have paid for someone to open the box in Japan.

ZenMarket sells a photo service for ¥500 an item that does something similar, for what it's worth — three photographs on request after purchase. It's the closest either service gets to letting you check before committing to international shipping.

What We Couldn't Resolve

One ambiguity sits at the centre of the auction case, and we would rather flag it than paper over it.

Buyee's fee page says, of auction and Mercari purchases: "One successful bid or purchase / flat rate ¥500. Even if the number of successful bids / purchases are more than 2, it is a flat rate of ¥500."

Read one way, that means all your auction wins in a period cost ¥500 total — which would make Buyee dramatically cheaper than the tables above suggest. Read the other way, it clarifies only that multiple wins within a single order don't stack.

We have costed the conservative reading throughout: ¥500 per seller. If the generous reading is correct, every Buyee number on this page is too high and the gap widens further in its favour. Nothing here becomes wrong — Buyee simply wins by more.

If you're planning a large multi-auction haul, that difference is worth a message to Buyee's support before you commit. We'd rather tell you the question exists than quote you a number we can't stand behind.

Which One Should You Use?

Most people who buy from Japan regularly end up with accounts at both, and route each order to whichever suits it. Registration is free at both and there's no exclusivity — that's not indecision, it's what the pricing rewards.

FAQ

Didn't Buyee charge 6%?

Not according to its own fee page in August 2026, which gives a flat ¥500 per order. The 6% figure circulates widely in English guides and we published it ourselves before checking. If you find it quoted somewhere, check the date on the page.

Is ZenMarket still ¥300 an item?

Only at its Recommended Stores. The standard rate is ¥500, and Mercari and JDirectItems Auction are ¥800 — those two went up during 2026. Most English comparisons haven't caught up.

I want to buy from Yahoo! Auctions. Which one?

Buyee, on fees. But note that neither service uses the name "Yahoo! Auctions" — both label their auction category "JDirectItems Auction." We explain that naming problem in the main proxy guide.

What about buying pre-owned figures?

Both handle AmiAmi and the secondhand shops fine, and the fee logic above applies unchanged. The thing that actually decides whether a pre-owned purchase goes well is reading the condition grade correctly, which we cover in our guide to AmiAmi's pre-owned grades.

Are these really the only two worth considering?

No. One Map (formerly FROM JAPAN) charges ¥500 per item, and folds inspection and 60 days of storage into that one fee — which makes it worth a look on a single item, and the wrong answer on several. Neokyo folds domestic shipping into a ¥350 per-item fee, which changes the maths for carts spread across many sellers. We compare all five in the full guide.

(Corrected 16 August 2026: this answer previously said FROM JAPAN charges ¥500 per order. Their own fee page says per item.)

The Bottom Line

If your shopping is auctions and Mercari — which describes most collectors — use Buyee, and switch the guarantee plan to Lite unless you specifically want the cover. The fee gap is large and structural, not marginal.

If you're buying single items from ordinary Japanese shops, especially ZenMarket's Recommended Stores, and especially if you need somewhere to hold things for more than a month, ZenMarket earns its place.

And whichever you pick: check the plan dropdown before you confirm. On most ordinary carts it is worth more than the difference between the two companies.